New York, NY (May 27, 2020)— In alliance with the Amazon Literary Partnership (ALP), the Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce the 2020 recipients of the Poetry Fund grants, which are provided annually to poetry organizations and presses that are selected from among a pool of applicants. The ALP originally launched the Poetry Fund with the Academy in 2019 to further its role as a supporter of poetry organizations nationwide and to build the readership of poetry.
The Academy, in cooperation with the ALP, convened a grantmaking panel this year that included Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tyehimba Jess, poet and publisher Parneshia Jones, and Utah Poet Laureate Paisley Rekdal. Final 2020 award decisions were made by the ALP in partnership with the Academy.
The 2020 Poetry Fund grant recipients are:
Alice James Books
BOA Editions, Ltd.
Cave Canem Foundation Inc.
Copper Canyon Press
Furious Flower Poetry Center
Nightboat Books
O, Miami Poetry Festival
Poetry Society of America
Poets House
The National Poetry Series
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe
Undocupoets
University of Arizona Poetry Center/CantoMundo
Urban Word NYC
White Pine Press
Zoeglossia
Zephyr Press
“We’re extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with the Amazon Literary Partnership to support poetry organizations, especially as more and more people are turning to poetry for comfort and courage in this crisis.” said Jennifer Benka, Executive Director, the Academy of American Poets. "We appreciate that the Amazon Literary Partnership program was quick to respond in this time of great need.”
“The Amazon Literary Partnership’s goal has been to support organizations that are vital to sustaining the literary culture of their communities,” said Alexandra Woodworth, Manager of the Amazon Literary Partnership. “By funding organizations working to uplift the voices of underrepresented writers, we hope to champion the writers, poets, and translators of the world we live in now. We are thrilled to be working again with the Academy of American Poets to reach these impactful and vital organizations committed to supporting today's most exciting poets.”
Since 2009, the Amazon Literary Partnership has awarded more than $13 million in grant funding to more than 175 literary organizations, with a particular focus on supporting a diversity of voices. Grant recipients include nonprofit writing centers, residencies, fellowships, after-school classes, literary magazines, national organizations supporting storytelling and free speech, and internationally acclaimed publishers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. As part of its decade-long effort to help writers tell their stories and find their readers, on May 27, 2020, the Amazon Literary Partnership announced over $1 million in grant funding to 66 nonprofit literary organizations across the country in addition to its support of the Academy of American Poets Poetry Fund, the Literary Magazine Fund with the Community of Literary Magazine and Press, and donations to Artist Relief and PEN America’s Writers’ Emergency Fund. To learn more about the Amazon Literary Partnership please visit www.amazonliterarypartnership.com.
To learn about the 2019 Poetry Fund grant recipients, visit: https://poets.org/academy-american-poets-announces-2019-poetry-grant-recipients-funded-amazon-literary-partnership.
About the Academy of American Poets
The Academy of American Poets is the nation’s leading champion of poets and poetry with supporters in all fifty states. Founded in 1934, the organization produces Poets.org, the world’s largest publicly funded website for poets and poetry; organizes National Poetry Month; publishes the popular Poem-a-Day series and American Poets magazine; provides award-winning resources to K–12 educators, including its Teach This Poem series; administers the American Poets Prizes; hosts an annual series of poetry readings and special events; and coordinates a national Poetry Coalition working together to promote the value poets bring to our culture. Through its prize program, the Academy annually awards more funds to individual poets than any other organization, giving a total of $1,250,000 to more than 200 poets at various stages of their careers. This year, in response to the global health crisis, the Academy launched the #ShelterInPoems initiative, inviting members of the public to select poems of comfort and courage from its online collection to share with others on social media. The initiative culminated in the organization’s first-ever virtual reading, which was watched more than 25,000 times by viewers in more than 40 countries around the world. The Academy is also one of seven national organizations that comprise Artist Relief, a multidisciplinary coalition of arts grantmakers and a consortium of foundations working to provide resources and funding to the country’s individual poets, writers, and artists who are impacted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.